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French Cooking for One
Les Fugitives proudly presents its very first cookbook, part of its fast-growing ‘quick brown fox’ collection of English originals: a unique work of literary and culinary joie de vivre, part food memoir, part recipe book. Beautifully illustrated, this is a personal and quirky book, a working cook's book with French flair, bursting with delicious recipes, piquant storytelling and feminist wit.
“Part of the beauty of the art of cooking is that it involves transience, making something delightful that then vanishes, and that in turn involves cherishing the time we spend on perfecting a dish. Cooking yourself something delicious is rewarding, satisfying, cheering. It makes us feel capable, creative, able to take care of ourselves. Cooking for yourself makes you feel spoiled and cherished.”
French cuisine, classic though it is, still holds delicious surprises worth exploring. Whether cooking for one on a daily or an occasional basis, cooking well for yourself means cherishing yourself and your appetites, joyously giving yourself pleasure, opening yourself to new experiences. This book will encourage you to do all that.
Infused with Michèle Roberts’ longstanding love of food – which frequently features in her literary fiction – this book is bursting with life. It shows a wide variety of easy-to-follow recipes including many vegetarian ones, from quick bites for busy days to sumptuous main courses for those who enjoy spending more time in the kitchen. The focus throughout is on dishes that are simple and fun to prepare, and results that are mouthwatering to contemplate and, of course, to eat.
Mixed in with the recipes are stories and vignettes of Michèle Roberts’ childhood in Normandy and her life in Mayenne, Pays de Loire, plus original ink drawings full of charm and humour.
“Part of the beauty of the art of cooking is that it involves transience, making something delightful that then vanishes, and that in turn involves cherishing the time we spend on perfecting a dish. Cooking yourself something delicious is rewarding, satisfying, cheering. It makes us feel capable, creative, able to take care of ourselves. Cooking for yourself makes you feel spoiled and cherished.”
French cuisine, classic though it is, still holds delicious surprises worth exploring. Whether cooking for one on a daily or an occasional basis, cooking well for yourself means cherishing yourself and your appetites, joyously giving yourself pleasure, opening yourself to new experiences. This book will encourage you to do all that.
Infused with Michèle Roberts’ longstanding love of food – which frequently features in her literary fiction – this book is bursting with life. It shows a wide variety of easy-to-follow recipes including many vegetarian ones, from quick bites for busy days to sumptuous main courses for those who enjoy spending more time in the kitchen. The focus throughout is on dishes that are simple and fun to prepare, and results that are mouthwatering to contemplate and, of course, to eat.
Mixed in with the recipes are stories and vignettes of Michèle Roberts’ childhood in Normandy and her life in Mayenne, Pays de Loire, plus original ink drawings full of charm and humour.
200 pages, Paperback
Published November 7, 2024
About the author
Michèle Roberts
90 books113 followersMichèle Brigitte Roberts is the author of fifteen novels, including Ignorance which was nominated for the Women's Prize for Fiction and Daughters of the House which won the W.H. Smith Literary Award and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Her memoir Paper Houses was BBC Radio 4's Book of the Week in June 2007. She has also published poetry and short stories, most recently collected in Mud: Stories of Sex and Love. Half-English and half-French, Roberts lives in London and in the Mayenne, France. She is Emeritus Professor of Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
May 29, 2026
Cooking involves curiosity, tenderness, sensuality, a sense of humour about things going wrong, a willingness to keep learning. To cook well you need to love eating and to love giving to people. Only then do you pay sufficient attention to what you are doing and enjoy doing it. This principle certainly applies to cooking for yourself. If you cherish yourself and your appetites, you can't go wrong.
Michèle Roberts's is perhaps best known in literary circles for her Booker shortlisted Daughters of the House and her Women's Prize longlisted Ignorance, but this is a departure for both author and publisher Les Fugitives - a cookbook in the tradition of Edouard De Pomaine's 1930 La cuisine en dix minutes, ou l'Adaptation au rhythme moderne, translated as Cooking in Ten Minutes.
But this is a very personal take on cooking, with the recipes, many vegetarian if not vegan, supported with evocative vignettes, written with a novelist's flair, of the author's, born of an English father and French mother, summer holidays with her maternal grandparents in Normandy, and her own time spend in the Mayenne.
Wild mushrooms would pop up in the field opposite my house, usually on cowpats, after a spell of rain. Other mushrooms preferred growing under particular trees. Yvette often took me foraging in our local forest, to collect chanterelles, girolles and ceps. She headed for the remote glades she had known for fifty years.
She foraged in a respectful way, using a wicker basket, so that spores could drop through the gaps and replenish the yield, picking only in season, never taking more than she needed. Ignorant or selfish foragers used plastic bags, and picked huge amounts to sell to restaurants. We crept along, eyes to the ground, bottoms in the air. I would get bored and start looking around at huge red-spotted toadstools, vivid mosses, golden dappled light on bronze drifts of leaves. Yvette would cry out in triumph: another cep! I've got the eyes of a lynx! Generous, pitying my inadequacies, she would share her haul, cautioning me not to over-flavour the mushrooms when I cooked them, to keep it simple.
Roberts is unashamedly Francophone (Frenchness is classically associated with stylishness and flair, the pursuit of enjoyment in all aspects of life. The art of living well involves knowing how to relish the present; being open to its possibilities for play and creativity), but also very practical in her cooking, the portions tailored for the solo eater and the preparation and cooking times minimised (the complicated sauces of haute cuisine have no place in this book. Add a dash of white wine to the pan juices and you will not go wrong.), with a strong emphasis on experimentation and adaptation to what works for the reader.
And the beautifully produced book (of course with French flaps!) is illustrated with some quirky drawings from the author:
Wonderful - and perhaps the only issue with so many tempting, and accessible, recipes is to know which one to try first.
Michèle Roberts's is perhaps best known in literary circles for her Booker shortlisted Daughters of the House and her Women's Prize longlisted Ignorance, but this is a departure for both author and publisher Les Fugitives - a cookbook in the tradition of Edouard De Pomaine's 1930 La cuisine en dix minutes, ou l'Adaptation au rhythme moderne, translated as Cooking in Ten Minutes.
But this is a very personal take on cooking, with the recipes, many vegetarian if not vegan, supported with evocative vignettes, written with a novelist's flair, of the author's, born of an English father and French mother, summer holidays with her maternal grandparents in Normandy, and her own time spend in the Mayenne.
Wild mushrooms would pop up in the field opposite my house, usually on cowpats, after a spell of rain. Other mushrooms preferred growing under particular trees. Yvette often took me foraging in our local forest, to collect chanterelles, girolles and ceps. She headed for the remote glades she had known for fifty years.
She foraged in a respectful way, using a wicker basket, so that spores could drop through the gaps and replenish the yield, picking only in season, never taking more than she needed. Ignorant or selfish foragers used plastic bags, and picked huge amounts to sell to restaurants. We crept along, eyes to the ground, bottoms in the air. I would get bored and start looking around at huge red-spotted toadstools, vivid mosses, golden dappled light on bronze drifts of leaves. Yvette would cry out in triumph: another cep! I've got the eyes of a lynx! Generous, pitying my inadequacies, she would share her haul, cautioning me not to over-flavour the mushrooms when I cooked them, to keep it simple.
Roberts is unashamedly Francophone (Frenchness is classically associated with stylishness and flair, the pursuit of enjoyment in all aspects of life. The art of living well involves knowing how to relish the present; being open to its possibilities for play and creativity), but also very practical in her cooking, the portions tailored for the solo eater and the preparation and cooking times minimised (the complicated sauces of haute cuisine have no place in this book. Add a dash of white wine to the pan juices and you will not go wrong.), with a strong emphasis on experimentation and adaptation to what works for the reader.
And the beautifully produced book (of course with French flaps!) is illustrated with some quirky drawings from the author:
Wonderful - and perhaps the only issue with so many tempting, and accessible, recipes is to know which one to try first.
May 27, 2025
So delightful… read through and plan to make chicken savoie style with salade verte this evening.
January 21, 2025
This was a quite charming little book; it is a set of very simple small recipes and you certainly need to be a fan of anchovies, walnut sized chunks of butter, and eggs if you are keen for them. Within and between the recipes are personal reminiscences and stories.
The book is obviously written to be used as if one had read the whole thing; I don’t think you could dip in and out without first at least having skimmed it and planned courses. The quantities, however, are actually aimed at one person, which is nice to see. Assuming, that is, that onions and potatoes are a little smaller in France! Simple and elegant; I read a friend’s copy, but I may buy one of my own.
The book is obviously written to be used as if one had read the whole thing; I don’t think you could dip in and out without first at least having skimmed it and planned courses. The quantities, however, are actually aimed at one person, which is nice to see. Assuming, that is, that onions and potatoes are a little smaller in France! Simple and elegant; I read a friend’s copy, but I may buy one of my own.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews